Cybernetic Alignment Information
Excerpted from Darth's Interest in Alignment: Cybernetic page This summary will explain the benefits of choosing the Cybernetic path, forsaking your humanity for the chance to inflict more damage on your enemies. The first skill is Augmented Musculature. It provides a maximum increase of 9% to the damage you cause, increasing at 25 hit intervals up to 150. So if you have a staff that does 2000 points of damage, when you reach 25, it will do 2180. It will increase another 9% at 50, then again until your hit counter reaches 150. When capped, you will do 3355 damage every hit, an increase of 1354. This is before any other mofifiers are added for air kills, critical hits, or slide attack damage. As you can see, 9% may not sound like much, but at the rate your character will build up his hit counter (especially a Berserker or a Champion) this skill can soon turn you into a powerhouse of damage. Enhanced Mobility Actuators works much like its sister skill in the Human path. The difference is, instead of granting you a boost to your slide attack SPEED, it increases your slide attack DAMAGE by 28%. That is an almost 1/3 increase! If you are a class that does a lot of slide attacks, such as a Berserker, Champion, or Defender, this is a skill well worth investing in. It also stacks with the first tier skill, Augmented Musculature. Here is an example. If your weapon does 2000 damage, but you maxed out this skill, it will now do 2560 points a hit. If you are a character who gets his hit counter to 100 (easy for a Berserker) you will do over 3600 points of damage per hit! This is before any of his Battle Cries or other skills are taken into account. Again, any class who depends on slide attacks for the majority of their damage infliction should give serious consideration to maxing this skill. Now, the paths diverge. We will first look at the left path, or what I call “The Rifleman.” The first skill here is Retooled Munitions Distributor. If you could not guess, it affects your ammunition. More to the point, it grants you a 70% increase in your ammunition for all ballistic weapons. That is over half. Two red runes will push this figure to 120%. That is more than double the ammunition! This is especially helpful for Commando's, who will spend the majority of their time engaged in ranged combat, or for anyone using the deadly but extremely low ammo capacity pistols. If you plan on doing a lot of ballistic combat you should drop points into here ASAP. The next skill is Ballistic Telemetry Feedback. At its maximum, it will increase your ballistic weapons range by 28%. Runes can increase it another 20%, allowing you to "reach out and touch someone" long before they can do the same to you. My Cybernetic Cannon Commando has this skill capped. Combined with runes and his own left path Commando skill of the same name, he gains a range modifier of 76%. With his cannon, he can destroy enemies across the screen before they have fully spawned. If you are a class who depends on ranged weaponry, such as a Commando, or in certain cases a Defender or Champion, seriously consider maxing this skill out. The last skill in this path is Terminal Ballistics Analysis. This skill grants you a 14% chance for all of your shots to pass through the target and strike the enemy behind it. This equates to being able to kill 2 enemies for the price of one as the damage does not degrade from the penetrated shot. This skill works with both slug, plasma, and yes, laser. My Cyber Defender uses his laser cannon to great effect when I go left path, and it passes through enemies to strike their comrades all of the time. While more of a gimmick skill than a useful one like the first two, it can be very helpful nevertheless. And if you desire to reach the terminus of this alignment, you will have to invest at least 6 points anyway. The right path of this branch is what I call the “Enhancements Branch”. It works by augmenting your abilities, maximizing their effectiveness, and making you better able to mete out damage or protection, depending on your chosen skills. The first is Spreader of Ruin. Unlike the Human paths similar skill, this doesn’t increase the damage that your ruiners do, but rather increases the radius of the effect. Cybernetic Weapons Based Ruiners already do a vast amount of direct and effects based damage, depending on the weapon you have equipped when you use them. This skill pushes their already incredible destruction radius out another 14%. If you cap out your ruiner damage to 30% with runes, you will find that some of the Cybernetic Ruiners, such as Shield of the Frost King, Plasma Overcharge, or Bones of Ymir will absolutely kill everything, and I mean everything, if popped at level 3. The next skill here is Submunitions Distributor. This is a tricky skill, as it can either be very useful or totally worthless. “Procs” are those special effects that various weapons and charms deal to enemies. Anything from lightning damage to Gravity Wells. Each of these has a certain percentage (usually very low) of ocurrence, or “proccing.” When capped off, Submunitions Distributor adds 7% to the chance that the proc occurs. This can turn Cybernetic characters into Gods Among Men. Here is an example. My Cyber Bioengineer doesn’t seem very impressive on the surface. He has horrible stats for both melee and ranged damage as well as lowered resistances for all damage types. He has no real offensive skills, and the only thing he can do is heal himself, so you would think he would not be one of the deadliest characters I have…but you would think wrong. He is equipped with an epic 2 handed staff that has a 6% chance of creating a necro, or acid pool, that kills anything that wonders into it, including trolls and dark elf leaders (spiders). He has a Red Epic Charm of Necrotization that adds another 6% chance of creating a pool. He has a 5% chance due to using a 2 handed weapon, with maxed out status chance, and his Submunitions Distributor grants another 7% on top of that. That means I have an almost 25% chance of creating a giant acid pool every time I swing my weapon. I have around a 15% chance of creating a gravity well that pulls multiple enemies to their deaths if either I hit them or they strike me. The result is very few enemies get close enough for me to fight. I believe my personal best was, at one time, 8 gravity wells and so many acid pools they just melded together into one, but probably around 7. I have heard that Shaynard and Prodigy have done more. Suffice to say, you can glitch out your XBOX with the effects a Bio Engineer can create. If you are a big fan of these status effects, then going Cybernetic and capping off this skill is a must. The last skill here is Everflowing Source. It adds up to 70% to your spiders total duration time. So if you are a big fan of the spider, this skill is well worth investing in. My friend has a Grammaton Cleric Champion who maxes out his spider (at the expense of his ranged skills for a right path, I know), along with Everflowing Source, and then increases everything with damage and duration runes. His little Chain Turret Spider is a force of death. My middle path Cyber Defender and Bio Engineer max this skill and can become completely indestructible for over a minute with their “shield” spiders. So if you are a big fan of pushing the Y button, this skill is for you. The Terminus of the Cybernetic Alignment path is Hardened Carbotanium Chassis. This skill is like a total armor rune, raising the defensibility of your equipped armor pieces, and thus your survivability by up to 14%. In my honest opinion, your hard earned skill points can be put to better use, as total armor runes can help you reach the 1530 armor cap. However, if you have nothing else you see yourself investing your points in, capping this skill might save you a slot in your armor for another healing effectiveness or ruiner damage rune.